Through Shahana’s Eyes

In the novel “Shahana”, the author Rosanne Hawke used the third person limited and this will allow readers to concentrate on the storyline and travel along with Shahana for more suspense.

Shahana is not a normal child who gets everything she wants and her childhood is very different than what we believe as normal. The best thing about the novel is story narration from Shahana’s point of view, maybe the caption of the series “Through my eyes” suits amazingly because we see a war from a child´s perspective. As a kid, taking family’s responsibility is not a simple task. We believe that the world is peaceful and our generation children all are getting what they need, in terms of education and family life, but this novel will break all of our beliefs and show you the other dimension of the world. It might be difficult to digest but the novel set the path for you to verify and explore further. The best example from the novel is when the author tries to show that Shahana pretends to be brave in front of her brother, but in her mind, she doubts that she is brave enough to survive such a situation. For instance, in this excerpt we understand Shahana better: “Shahana tries to sound brave for her brother. “I will repair it,” she says.” While reading this we get to know that she wants to be caring for her brother even though they are in such a difficult situation.

Shahana still a child but her situation and neighbourhood forces her to be mature enough and strong enough to face the world. Although the society treats her like a child, Shahana feels like she needs someone that can take care of her. It is difficult to accept the sudden transformation as an adult in your childhood. This is the reason novel travels with Shahana’s point of view and its make easier for readers to understand the thinking of Shahana.

To make the novel more interesting, I think author purposely used the third-person limited in the novel and did not explain all others perspective. This style is good and it gives us focus on the storyline. To give some more interest to the storyline the author creates some suspense in between. For instance when her brother Tanveer disappeared and she does not know where he is. If the readers knew it already then it would not be as interesting.

In my opinion, the third person limited point of view that is used in the story is essential for the novel. If this was different, then the story would not be as thrilling and would not give the same reading experience.